EIGHT
Cyrus
I was pretty sure it wasn't just me and my ego.
That shit was weird.
I mean, it had only been a month. Reese couldn't have changed that much in that short a timeframe, right?
But one moment, she had been tearing up, and melting in my arms, the next she was stiff as a board, and coming up with some bullshit excuse?
I wouldn't go as far as to claim she outright lied to me, but I was pretty sure she wasn't giving me the full truth either.
Why?
Yeah, that was the question.
It would have made sense if she shot me down as a whole, if she took the money, and threw it in my face, if she told me I could take my friendship and shove it up my ass.
But, you know, in Reese words. Meaning cut out the profanity, and add in some cute as fuck stammering.
She didn't do that, though.
But she did confront me.
That wasn't something I even knew was in her wheelhouse. Somehow, though, I was proud of her being able to demand a genuine apology, to stand her ground. It was a step in the right direction for her. I couldn't help but wonder what brought it on.
Then after she confronted me, she let me hug her. And I'd swear to fuck, the second her body pressed into mine, I could feel the change in her. She softened; she snuggled closer. I was certain I actually felt her nipples harden and press into my chest. Then again, maybe that was wishful thinking.
But something changed while she was in my arms.
She got tense.
She pulled away.
Then made some bullshit excuse to put off coffee.
The thing was... why?
It would have made sense if she simply turned me down flat, not rescheduled.
Fuck.
I was probably just overthinking it. Maybe she just did have plans.
I would weasel it out of her over ice cream.
"Whose car is that?" I asked as I made my way toward the door to the compound, jerking my chin toward the sleek silver Jag parked on the street right out front in a decidedly 'no parking' zone that none of us even fucked with. Didn't want the attention of the law over a parking ticket.
"Summer's dad is here," Reeve explained, shrugging.
Richard Lyon hardly ever stepped foot near The Henchmen compound, despite his only daughter being married to the president of it.
It was simply bad business, he'd once explained.
It was one thing to be related by marriage, to see his daughter and her children on more mutual turf. It was another, I imagined, to be seen on Reign's turf.
It could fuck with business.
Anything could cause problems, I would assume, when you were a big-time cocaine dealer.
"So, did she forgive you?" Reeve asked, not usually one for small talk.
"Fucking Wasp," I sighed, leaning up against the wall beside him. She was never one for keeping secrets between the two of us. If she knew, Reeve always did. And if she knew something about Reeve, I always knew. The only one who didn't get told was our mother.
Small miracle.
"She said you got it bad for the coffeeshop girl."
I exhaled hard, looking off at the street.
Did I?
I was pretty sure I did.
I just didn't get the chance to tell her that yet.
That was the point of coffee.
Coffee that would maybe lead to a ride on my bike.
Back to her place.
Not to fuck her, though.
No.
See, the guys may have been ribbing me, but they were actually right about one thing. I was going to be using my long game on Reese.
Fact of the matter was, I was pretty sure she hadn't been with a man in a good, long while. So I didn't want to rush her into anything. I wanted to go at her pace. If that meant I didn't so much as get to kiss her for another five weeks, I was fine with that.
Hell, I hadn't been with a woman since the night I met her at She's Bean Around.
I could hold off a while longer.
For her.
She'd be more than fucking worth it.
I had a feeling that buried under the reserved surface, she was wild, insatiable, hotter than anyone I had ever touched. Times about a thousand.
"Enough to finally use the money," I agreed.
See, Pops always knew his line of work would end him in a grave likely before all of us turned of-age. As such, he had prepared. Even our mother had no idea it was coming until Reeve turned eighteen, and he got his envelope in the mail. Then a couple years later, I got mine. Then, a few after me, Wasp got hers.
One-hundred grand each.
Reeve, as far as I knew, had most of his money still. He dipped in when his truck needed fixing back before we joined The Henchmen, but hadn't seemed to spend any more.
Wasp, well, she bought her RV with it, and used more to help her start up her, ah, business.
Me, well, I never really needed mine.
Bills were low before The Henchmen.
Then income was high after we joined.
There was no reason.
"A hundred-grand?" he asked, watching my profile. "What'd you buy her? A fucking Porsche?"
"An addition for the library."
"Say again?"
"She's a librarian. The other librarians teamed up to kill her idea for a teen center she had her heart set on," I explained, remembering the way that she teared up telling me about it, looking out the window at The Creamery to try to hide the fact that it still affected her so much. "I fucked up with her," I went on, not giving him the whole story. "It was a, um, grand gesture."
Reeve turned to me, a rare smirk playing at his lips. "And it still wasn't enough? What'd you do, fuck her sister?"
"Haven't fucked anyone since I met her."
"Including her?" he asked, brows drawn low.
I couldn't even blame him. My reputation with women certainly preceded me.
"Including her. I was just planning on being her friend, man."
"And it didn't work out that way."
"You'd have to meet her to get it."
"Cy, your reaction to her says it all. Been a slut your whole life, but this girl, you don't put your hands on, even with all those days and nights you spent with her? Says she's something unique. What I can't figure out is why you're home forty minutes after you left to go see her."
Kinda what I wanted to know too.
"Dunno. She brushed off my offer of coffee, but agreed to meet me for ice cream tomorrow."
I could feel Reeve's gaze on my profile, knowing because I knew him, that his mind was working.
"So, let me see if I got the stories between you and Wasp right. She's a nice girl, shy librarian with her nose always in a book. You meet her, strike up a friendship. It doesn't seem like she's a girl with a lot of friends, so you are kind of opening up a world to her that she hasn't really seen much of outside reading it in a book."
"Ah... yeah?"
Where the hell was he going with this?
"One night, you start reading her smutty books to her, and she gives you the 'eyes.' You almost start something, but get interrupted."
"Again, yeah."
"God, you're fucking dense sometimes, bro," he said, shaking his head as he tilted it up, smiling a little at the sky. "She's not upset because her friend disappeared for a while. She's been upset because she had feelings for you, probably deep ones, and then you started to give her something more than friendship, snatched it away, and fucking disappeared on her. She's hurt. She's bitter. And she doesn't trust you anymore. So now you're back out of nowhere, big grand gesture in hand, offering to take her out again, and she doesn't want to get hurt again. So she's keeping you at a distance. But she doesn't want you to know that, so she's keeping up the charade, just on her own terms, and after a little introspection."
See, the thing about Reeve was, no one knew dick about him in the club. Reign, Cash, Wolf, and Repo had the inside track because they demanded to know our dirty laundry when we signed up, but everyone else just saw a somewhat sullen, distant, cold, and maybe even boring guy.
What they didn't know, though, was he had good reason to be all those things. For fuck's sake, he had good reason to be sitting in a corner rocking and humming soothingly to himself from now until he died of old age.
He'd endured more than any one should have to.
So he wasn't the man he once was.
That being said, he had his moments. He had his triggers that set off the chatty side in him, that made him dole out advice, which made him show a small spark of the fire that used to keep him warm.
But, perhaps because he was so staid, so quiet, he did manage to see a lot, to pick up on undercurrents that the rest of us were too busy to notice.
And he gave good advice.
You know, when I bothered to want to ask for it.
"You know, maybe you should rethink your career choice, man," I said, trying to lighten the mood slightly, the air between us feeling oppressive. "I mean, I think TV pseudo-psychology could use a man like you. Move over Dr. Phil, we got a younger, better-looking guy to take your place."
Reeve rolled his eyes, but his lips were still tipped up for a moment. But then he looked over at me, face almost hauntingly serious.
"Give her tonight because she needs it, but then you need to make sure she knows how you feel, that you want this to go somewhere. Don't fuck it up because of your ego or uncertainty. Life is short but vicious. Love is one of the few fucking things that make it worthwhile to endure."
With that, he turned, and went back in the clubhouse, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Of course I didn't want to fuck things up.
That being said, I had never really done anything with a woman that required me to apologize, to grovel, to have to accept it if she decided she wanted nothing to do with me. True, most of that was because I never got serious with a woman, but still. It was uncharted territory; I had no compass, and Reese was the only one who knew if it was even possible for me to get where I wanted to.
This not knowing what I was doing with a woman thing was foreign. And if this was how average guys felt around chicks, well, they had my fucking sympathy. It was not a good feeling.
"Dad, it's too much," Summer's voice insisted, going for firm, but not quite making that punch as she, Reign, and her father moved out the front door.
"It isn't," he insisted. "They're my only grandchildren. I will spoil them to my heart's content," Richard insisted, touching his daughter's cheek, and offering her a smile. "I have to get back to the office, but I will be over tomorrow with the presents," he assured her, giving Reign a respectful chin-jerk, then moving down the yard toward his car.
And I swear, it happened the exact second his second heel moved off of Henchmen turf.
His foot pressed down, the car screeched out of nowhere, and the shots rang out across the night.
My heart seized as my stomach lurched, the rapid popping of automatic machine-gun firing making my pulse jump as my body instinctively ducked, as my hand reached for a gun at my waistband that simply wasn't there.
My eyes flew to the street, watching as a hail of bullets pierced through Richard Lyon's body, sending out spurts of red blood through his expensive gray suit, and into the side of his Jag. His body jolted with each hit, and I couldn't help but be morbidly fascinated with how he stayed on his feet when shot a dozen times.
"Daddy!"
Summer's gut-wrenching scream drew my attention to the side where I watched as she tried to lurch forward, tried to run to him without thinking. Reign's arm shot out, grabbing her around the forearm, pulling back so roughly that I was sure her shoulder must have popped.
But there was no time for delicacy as the shots kept ringing out, as the doors to the compound opened, bringing out our men, armed for any possible threat, as Reign pulled Summer to his chest, and dropped them both to the ground, his body shielding hers.
Even as Reeve was shoving a gun into my hand, though, the car was speeding off, and the silence for one solid moment was deafening.
It was broken only as Summer managed to lift her head and see the body of her father, riddled with bullets, red fucking everywhere, lifeless on the ground, and she let out a sound that I'd swear would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
It was the sound of someone's heart breaking.
Fucking shattering.
At the sound, Reign's face sank, his forehead landing in her shoulder for a second as he seemed to try to find some strength to help her through it, even as she was clawing at the ground to try to get out from under him, and to her father's prone body.
"Let me go!" she shrieked as he moved to stand, trying to pull her back to him, trying to shield her from an awful reality he didn't want her to face.
"Summer, babe, no," Reign tried, jerking his head to the side to avoid one of her flinging, frantic arms. "You don't want to see..."
"He's my father!" she screamed - screamed - back in his face, tears streaming wildly down her face.
"Okay," Reign agreed, letting her run, but following right behind.
"What the fuck?" Cash hissed at my side as Summer threw herself down on her father's, obviously dead, body, her entire frame shaking uncontrollably with her sobs that we could all hear from all the way across the yard.
Edison, Virgin, and Sugar came running back inside the front gates, making me realize that, in the chaos, that trio had somehow kept their heads, and taken off after the threat without me even realizing.
The door behind me creaked open even as Cash moved to go to his brother and sister-in-law.
"Silver BMW with no plates," Roan supplied, voice matter-of-fact, completely devoid of any emotion, not even the adrenaline surge that we all were feeling. "Nothing to go on," he added, shrugging it off.
"Followed 'em up to Wilson where they cut down, and sped the fuck up," Sugar supplied, shaking his head, his whole body tense, like he was a spring ready to snap.
"Who you calling?" Virgin asked as Edison brought out his phone, scrolled, then brought it up to his ear.
"Girls club. Summer is wrecked," he supplied, moving off, talking in his growl to, I would imagine, Lo, who would make all the calls from there.
"I thought all this shit was over," Duke said, raking his hands down his face.
"I don't think it's related," I supplied without thinking, realizing I would have to make my case as all their eyes fell on me. "They didn't pull up until Lyon's feet were completely off of Henchmen turf," I explained. "I think if someone has an enemy, it is him, not us."
"Guns," Repo supplied, appearing out of nowhere. I don't think he was even at the clubhouse. But, then again, he lived right down the side street, so maybe he just came when he heard trouble. "Now!" he snapped when no one moved to throw them in the pail he had grabbed from the side of the building. "Got less than a minute before the cops show up. Need this shit gone. Innocent bystanders."
The thing was, for once, we all truly were.
If the target was Lyon, and he wasn't taken down on Henchmen land, then it had nothing to do with us.
Though, I did personally think that it was some kind of muscle-flexing to do it in front of our clubhouse.
Lyon might have lived in a fortress, but I was sure there were other places to take him down that didn't involve another organization in the area.
"Someone's steppin' up," Wolf informed us as he came in from the street, having bypassed Reign and Summer, likely figuring it was a private moment.
"And not for nothing," Duke said, shaking his head. "But Lyon was the only one keeping V in check."
V was a little before my time, but as I understood it, was a violent, skin-trading, heinous bitch. And I don't use the b-word all that often. She also had the rare distinction of being Richard's ex... and Summer's mother. And after shit went down when Reign met Summer, Lyon had been able to get his hands on his ex, then lock her in his own private cell on his estate.
What did it mean that he was dead?
Did his men have some kind of orders for when they knew someone took him out?
Was she to be moved?
Killed?
God fucking forbid... set free?
Would there even be any men left after tonight?
Were the shooters on their way there next? Or on their way back from there?
If someone else was stepping in on the cocaine trade, what did that mean for the dynamic in Navesink Bank that had been working somewhat harmoniously for many years, everyone keeping to themselves, running their own empires, and leaving the others to do the same?
If there was a new player in town, what were the chances that they were going to play by the rules of those who came before them?
And what could it possibly mean if they found, and teamed up, with someone as evil as V?
These were questions for later, though, as red and blue lights suddenly came flying down the street.
Another day, another police interrogation.
And another man laying dead in the street.